The Frugal Innovator Creating Change on a Shoestring Budget

by Leadbeater, Charles

• ISBN13: 9781137335364
• ISBN10: 113733536X
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2014-05-23
• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan

Summary

Frugal innovation is a powerful new model for creating solutions for a world struggling with rapid population growth, exploding demand from consumers on modest incomes, and global pressure to minimize environmental damage. This new wave of innovation started in the developing world but is spreading globally.

This inspiring book provides an insight into what promises to become a worldwide movement as large companies in developed economies start to learn from entrepreneurs in the developing world, who are coming up with radical solutions to pressing challenges. Frugal innovators follow four design principles to create these solutions: 'lean, simple, clean and social'.

Frugal innovators are devising these new solutions for clean water and energy, affordable housing and health care, because the constraints they work give them no option but to think radically and challenge conventional wisdom. By unpicking the principles, drivers and methods for frugal innovation, Leadbeater's analysis and case studies lead to practical 'how-to' strategies for applying frugal innovation wherever you work.

Author Biography

Charles Leadbeater is an independent adviser, best-selling author, award winning journalist and recognized thought-leader on innovation whose advice is sought by governments, cities and organizations throughout the world. He was awarded the prestigious David Watt Prize for journalism after a distinguished career at the Financial Times, where we was Labor Editor, Industrial Editor and Tokyo Bureau Chief all by the age of 32, before leaving to become Assistant Editor at The Independent. Leadbeater went on to become a key adviser to Tony Blair's policy team at the Downing Street Policy Unit and the Department of Trade and Industry, specializing in the impact of the Internet and the knowledge driven economy, helping to shape government policy across a number of fronts. He is a senior research associate with Demos, the London think tank and a founder of Participle, the leading public services innovation agency, which is working with public sector agencies to create next generation public services. Charlie is also a visiting fellow at the National Endowment for Science Technology and the Arts, where he has championed ideas of open and user driven innovation. He has a long track record of involvement in social innovation and is co-chairman of the social enterprise Apps 4 Good, an advisor to the Ministry of Stories and a supporter of Mothers-2-Mothers, the self help network of HIV positive mothers in Africa.

Table of Contents

1. The Groundswell
2. Design Principles
3. Frugal Places
4. Frugal Methods
5. Conclusions